Experts Guide

Salinas is an expert on family violence, adverse childhood experiences, maternal and child health and perinatal epidemiology. He serves as the Director of the Harrell Center for the Study of Family Violence in the USF College of Public Health.

Mehmood is an expert in emergency and trauma care, global health and disaster management, humanitarian relief and homeland security.

Stuart is an expert in air quality, sustainable urban design, air pollution modeling, cloud chemistry and microphysics. She performs computational modeling and measurement of air pollutants in the environment and assesses exposures and impacts on populations.

Masys studies the intersection of wicked problems, social innovation and applied systems thinking, futures thinking and design thinking. He has published on topics including global health security, human security, disaster risk reduction and resilience.

Bulka is an environmental and molecular epidemiologist. Her research interests include the health effects of exposures to chemical pollutants such as metals and metalloids, perfluorinated substances, toxins and other inorganic contaminants, especially exposures that occur early in life.

Bakour is an expert in adverse childhood experiences, sleep epidemiology, chronic diseases, child and adolescent health. Specifically, she studies the effect of sleep duration and quality on the risk and progression of chronic diseases, and the impact of adverse childhood experiences on sleep, mental health and the risk of chronic diseases in adulthood.

McGuire-Wolfe is an expert in infection control in emergency settings, emergency responder health and safety, needlestick injury prevention and response and infectious disease exposure in occupational settings.

As an anthropologist working in social marketing, Parvanta studies how culture affects health behavior and develops audience-informed health and safety interventions. Her research uses social marketing to address college student vaping and emerging nicotine products. She is also using facial expression and vocal analysis tools to identify effective tobacco cessation counseling approaches.

Cragun is program director for genetic counseling and an expert in genetics and hereditary cancers.

Wildman's interdisciplinary research focuses on genomics, evolution, reproduction, stress and trauma and epigenetics.

Petersen is an expert in maternal and child health. She is the former senior associate vice president of USF Health and dean of the USF College of Public Health.

Michael is an epidemiologist who studies the spread and control of global infectious diseases. population biology, computational disease dynamics and the ecology of disease transmission. His work includes the development and implementation of novel analytical and computational approaches for providing a deeper understanding of the determinants, pathways and dynamics of disease transmission.

Dunn is an expert in global disaster management and preparedness, including for vulnerable populations. She also researches humanitarian relief, homeland security, community resilience, refugee resettlement and migration, international humanitarian assistance, human security and anti-human trafficking.

Daley is a behavioral researcher with interests in women's health, health literacy, reproductive health, Human Papillomavirus (HPV) prevention, HPV vaccines, adolescent health and health risk-taking behaviors.

Gray's research focuses on developing and evaluating obesity prevention and nutrition education intervention programs, especially for children and adolescents. She can discuss general nutrition and diet topics, and she has specialized expertise in childhood obesity prevention, community nutrition education, nutrition program evaluation and nutrition in children with autism spectrum disorder.

Salemi is an epidemiologist and an expert in maternal and child health, birth defects, public health surveillance and data systems, health data linkages and data visualization.

Marshall has expertise in community-engaged applied research and public health systems research and evaluation. She can discuss maternal and child health, community-based research, evaluation and implementation science, birth defects and developmental disabilities, and health systems and workforce. She is director of the NIOSH-funded Sunshine Education and Research Center for Health, Safety and Well-being (Sunshine ERC).

Roberts is a microbiologist and an expert in food safety, bacteriology, emerging diseases, bioterrorism and molecular epidemiology.

Ray has managed health care enrollment programs at USF for more than 20 years, including the largest Navigator grant in the country to help eligible uninsured Floridians get health care coverage. She can discuss health insurance, the Affordable Care Act, CHIP, Medicaid and health care access.

Bohn has a background in public health education, behavioral health and military operations. He can discuss behavioral health, opioid crisis outreach, suicide prevention outreach, community partnership development and public health community program planning.

Liller's research focuses on public health and injury prevention, including a textbook, "Injury Prevention for Children and Adolescents: Research, Practice, and Advocacy," published by the American Public Health Association.

Drabiak is co-director of the Law and Medicine Scholarly Concentration Program at USF’s Morsani College of Medicine. She is an expert in health law, public health law and medical ethics.

Wright is director of nutrition programs and past president of the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics. She is an expert diet, nutrition and wellness, malnutrition and food insecurity.

Martin is widely regarded as a pioneer and global leader in ecological immunology and disease ecology. His current work centers on the house sparrow, one of the world’s most widespread bird species. Collaborating with international colleagues, Martin studies the endocrine and immune systems of both native and introduced sparrow populations. His team also examines how stress shapes the spread of zoonotic diseases like West Nile virus and how body size influences immune system structure in mammals. His latest grant supports research into how natural environmental changes affect the immune systems of small mammals that carry the bacteria responsible for Lyme disease.

Pasha's research focus is social marketing with a focus on practice and translation to help communities to build capacity to improve behavioral outcomes. Her current community-based social marketing research includes improving access to clean water in Madagascar; reducing incidence of non-communicable diseases, specifically cardiovascular disease and hypertension, through policy and lifestyle changes in Latin America and the Caribbean; changing road users’ behaviors on key risk factors for road traffic injuries/fatalities (i.e. distracted driving) in Florida; and improving environmental health and road safety by encouraging the use of alternative modes of transportation.

Izurieta is an expert in tropical and infectious diseases whose research focuses on vectorborne and waterborne diseases, vaccinology and ecological changes and emerging diseases. He is director of the Donald Price Parasitology Center, and serves as a consultant for WASTE International (Netherlands) and Stockholm Environment Institute (Sweden).

DeBate is director of the USF Center for Applied Lifestyle Medicine. Her research focuses on eating disorders, mental health and the mental health and wellbeing of college students.

Kirby's research interests are broadly in maternal and child health, with specific on population-based research in birth defects and developmental disabilities, epidemiology and prevention, as well as on risk factors for adverse pregnancy outcomes. He is also interested in population health informatics, data integration and geospatial analysis.

Vermund is senior associate vice president of USF Health and dean of the University of South Florida College of Public Health. He serves as a Distinguished University Health Professor of Public Health and Pediatrics. In addition, he is director of the Cancer Control Prevention and Epidemiology Program for Tampa General Hospital and chief medical officer of the Global Virus Network, an international organization headquartered at USF.

Bernard's research focus includes industrial hygiene, occupational safety and health, evaluation and control of heat stress and strain ergonomics. He studies the effects of protective clothing on the level of heat stress and on the benefits of personal cooling systems, and the evolution of a framework for analyzing short-cycle manufacturing jobs that systematically examines biomechanics, muscle fatigue and cumulative trauma.

Quast can discuss health outcomes after hurricanes and other disasters, including problems connecting enrollees with insurance providers after catastrophic events. He also studies the emerging use of artificial intelligence, including predictive analytics, in clinical health care settings to anticipate utilization, optimize staffing and improve patient outcomes. He has expertise in child maltreatment and the foster care system.

Jacobs is an expert in community health, family health, nonprofit leadership, culturally responsive practice, trauma informed care, community engagement, adolescent mental health, grant administration, and the Affordable Care Act and navigators.